Asbestos Inspector Had Top Marks

The company that the York County school system trusted to determine how to make its 16 schools safe from asbestos claims to be the biggest company in its field in the country.

Hall-Kimbrell Environmental Management of Lawrence, Kan., says it has served more than 3,500 clients with 225,000 buildings, including New York City, Rhode Island, more than 400 public and private schools in Vermont, the universities of Virginia, Massachusetts and California and the public schools in St. Louis.

FOR THE RECORD - Published correction ran Wednesday, September 13, 1989. A story on the front page of Tuesday's Daily Press erroneously stated that the company performing asbestos removal work at Grafton-Bethel Elementary School is not licensed and is facing involuntary bankruptcy.Spinazzolo Construction Inc. contracted with the county School Board to remove asbestos from the ceilings of the school, according to County Attorney Richard M. Hixson. State Department of Commerce Director David Hathcock said the company is licensed to perform asbestos removal work in Virginia.Another company, Spinazzolo Systems Inc., contracted to remove a smaller amount of asbestos from pipes in the building and from four other county schools during the summer, Hixson said. Hathcock said Spinazzolo Systems Inc. is a trade name for Spinazzolo Spray Systems Inc., which had an asbestos removal license that expired Aug. 31, 1989. Spinazzolo Systems Inc. has never had its own license.U.S. Bankruptcy Court records show that Spinazzolo Spray Systems Inc., also known as Spinazzolo Systems Inc., filed for voluntary bankruptcy on Aug. 1, 1988. Those records show that the trustee appointed by the court to oversee Spinazzolo Spray Systems Inc. recommended in July that the court place the company in involuntary bankruptcy.No action has been taken on the trustee's request, and Spinazzolo Construction Inc. is not involved in the bankruptcy, those court records say.County School Superintendent Judith Ball said Tuesday that the company that removed asbestos is duly licensed and is continuing asbestos removal work at Grafton-Bethel.The school has been closed, sealed off as a hazardous area, and its students and teachers transferred to sessions at two other county schools while the asbestos problem is eliminated.Hathcock said Tuesday that investigators from the state commerce department were still trying to determine which company did - and is doing - the asbestos removal work at Grafton-Bethel."I don't know who the contractor is on this job," or whether it is licensed, he said.The licensed company, Spinazzolo Construction, and the unlicensed company, Spinazzolo Systems, are owned by the same people, State Corporation Commission records show.Hathcock and other commerce department officials say the two companies' operations have been intertwined in previous disputes with the agency.

When York County schools opened the bids for companies applying to inspect its buildings, train its employees and write an asbestos control plan for its more than 1,094,000 square feet of space, Hall-Kimbrell was the high bidder but won the contract anyway after agreeing to reduce its charges.

Now that the company's failure to identify potential asbestos hazards at Grafton-Bethel and Magruder Elementary is apparent, School Superintendent Judith Ball says she has doubts about the quality of the work the company did there and at other schools.

On its December 1987 resume submitted to the schools in its contract offer, Hall-Kimbrell claimed also to be the most experienced firm of its type and that it was the first to receive full federal accreditation for all required training courses offered under the Asbestos Hazard and Emergency Response Act of 1986 - known as AHERA. The rules were passed because asbestos is a carcinogen, commonly used in sound and fire proofing from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Hall-Kimbrell is approved by the state Department of Commerce to offer those training programs, confirmed Peggy Wood, assistant director of the asbestos licensing program for the Commerce Department. Management plans such as the one written for York County are not reviewed by the state except as part of a statewide analysis of asbestos control by the Department of Education, she said.

The newness of the AHERA act, devised in 1987 to remove the asbestos hazard from schools, means that no one has much experience in dealing with it, said David Boddy of the Virginia Department of Education, who oversees asbestos management for the state's schools.

"The program has been in effect a very short time. The framework, as required by law, was set up basically with little understanding of what was required for a management plan. No one had ever written one before" last year, said Boddy.

The state Department of Education hired four companies to inspect schools, prepare management plans and train local school personnel in school systems that opted to have the state manage their asbestos control programs, Boddy said. Hall-Kimbrell was not among those selected but only because it was too expensive, he said.

About 80 million square feet of school buildings, or about two-thirds of Virginia's public school space, was handled by the state contract, Boddy said. The other school systems, such as York's, contracted independently for the work.

Of the four companies that bid for the contract in York schools, one - BCM Potomac of Vienna, which bid $38,291, was one of the state-contracted firms, according to county purchasing records.

The others bidding for the job were Marine Chemist Service Inc. of Newport News, which bid $44,199, Davis & Floyd Inc. Consulting Engineers of Greenwood, S.C., bidding $68,142, and Hall-Kimbrell, at $68,917, those records show.

The bids from Marine Chemist and BCM Potomac did not include the cost of analyzing materials to see if they included asbestos, the records show.

Hall-Kimbrell ultimately reduced its bid to $66,466, "due to the tremendous response in your area," the records show. The company was unable Monday to provide a list of Virginia school clients.

Hall-Kimbrell had overlooked the radiators as a possible sources of asbestos contaminents, admitted Mark Aebi, who wrote the management plan for the school. "I've never come up against that," he said.

Ball said the school system is having four other schools tested: York High School, York Intermediate School, Seaford Elementary School and Bethel Manor Elementary School.

At Grafton-Bethel the actual removal of asbestos was contracted to Spinazzolo Construction Inc. and Spinazzolo Spray Systems Inc.